For all the radicalism espoused in their music, both Kurtág
and Ligeti are the natural inheritors of the sonic novelties
first explored by their compatriot Bartók. This becomes
explicitly the case when the solo viola is involved, where the
soundworlds summoned up by both composers, in their different
ways, nevertheless contain echoes of the older man's abrasive-folkloric
aesthetic.

Ligeti's Viola Sonata was written between 1991 and 1994 and
each of the six movements bears a dedication to a friend or
colleague: two movements, for instance, are dedicated to the
violist Tabea Zimmermann, who recorded it not long after it
was completed [Sony Classical SK62309].Here Bartók’s
looming shadow is clear, though naturally subsumed into Ligeti's
own complex fabric. The way he demands the violist to sustain
pitch in the first movement, a Hora Lunga, is fiendish,
as the soloist has to bend and twist her way through effortful
thickets. Once into the second movement, called Loop,
Ligeti writes some jazzy rhythms, before increasing tension
in the central movements, two of which are memorial pieces.
That is a role for which the viola has always been ideally suited,
and the taut yet allusive writing brings forth writing of intense
seriousness but brittle impression. It's a testament to
Kim Kashkashian's intellectual and digital stamina that attention
never flags.

Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages is an
ongoing project, largely begun two years before Ligeti's sonata.
Though ECM therefore dates the work to 1989 onwards, it seems
to have overlooked the fact that the two Jelek pieces
(Jelek I and II) were originally composed back in 1961
and have been severally and serially revised. The most recent
piece to have been written was composed in 2001 but others were
revised in 2005. Beauty for its own sake is something neither
composer is concerned about. The earthiness of the Hungarian
violin school, and its astringent bowing - courtesy of the retrogressive
Jenö Hubay teaching method - has led to a rather brittle
intensity to the national sound. But that is precisely what
is being channelled here, with a series of inbuilt slides, rich
dynamic gradients, folkloric currents, zinging pizzicati, and
raw Romanian-Transylvanian evocations. The sinewy, veiny writing
evokes, too, fiddle drones, terse memorialisations, and plenty
of refractive microtonal incident. The earliest pieces may reflect
more Webern than Bartók, but the later ones enshrine
the Hungarian inheritance more markedly. I'd especially cite
No.10, the Vagdalkozos, as evidence of the living Bartókian
tradition - packed into a Webernian 28 seconds, mind. The speech
patterns of his homage to John Cage - faltering words - are
astutely done, though some may think the maudlin pastiche of
a Plaintive Tune that begins the nineteenth piece is
somewhat too ripe for comfort. Some sobs can be too throaty,
even when proposed by Kurtág.

The terse and dramatic music-making here is expertly realised
by Kashkashian, who is fearless in her exploration of its
manifold difficulties and rewards.

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